The Self Aware Parent

A healthy relationship based on mutual trust is every parent's wish. The bond between infant and parent is a natural phenomenon, but as children reach their preteens and form their own personalities, fireworks between the child and parent can ensue. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience and new theories on attachment, family therapist and consultant to Parents magazine Dr. Fran Walfish argues that parents need to distinguish their own personality types in order to make more informed decisions about how they interact and raise their own children. This step-by-step guide shows parents: * how to recognize the strength and weaknesses of your parenting style and how it affects your child; * the ways your style might clash with your child's nature, and how to negotiate a common ground; * the vital importance of establishing trust with a preteen to better prepare for turbulent teen years. Written with warmth, authority, and wit, Dr. Walfish holds a gentle mirror up to parents and helps them understand themselves in order to create a closer relationship with their child.

Shefali Tsabary's invaluable book shows how the challenges of parenting can become a great opportunity for spiritual awakening.

If we are open to it, we can learn a great deal about ourselves through parenting. When we can tap into this wonderful gift of self-awareness, we naturally become better parents. Parenting endures from a child's birth to adulthood, and there are new and important lessons for us to embrace at every age. Through a series of relatable essays, Cathy Cassani Adams highlights the rich learning moments in our everyday experiences with children. Practical, yet profound, lessons emerge: -Taking care of yourself makes you a better parent -Accepting your children for who they are is the key to their self worth -Talking about feelings is essential at every stage of development -Understanding children's misbehavior makes discipline less daunting -Slowing down and simplifying makes parenting more enjoyable -Practicing self awareness leads to a healthy and trusting relationship with your children

This generation of parents is overwhelmed with parenting advice; Carla Naumburg sets out to remind them that they have everything they need to raise healthy, happy children. Mindful parenting is about paying attention to what is going on with your children and yourself without judging it or freaking out about it or thinking everyone, including yourself and your child, should be doing something differently. In Parenting in the Present Moment, Naumburg shares what truly matters in parenting—connecting with children in ways that are meaningful to them and you, staying grounded amidst the craziness of parenting, and staying present for whatever life throws your way. With reassuring, compassionate storytelling, she weaves the most current theories—about healthy relationships, compassionate self-care, and mindfulness—throughout vignettes of her own chaotic childhood and parental struggles. She shows how mindfulness creates a solid foundation for any style of parenting, regardless of your cultural background, socio-economic status, or family structure. She also introduces the STAY model for tough times: Stop whatever it is you’re doing; Take a Breath; Attune to you thoughts and those of your child; and Yield to what is happening so you can respond from a place of connection and compassion. Parenting is an ongoing journey that constantly challenges every parent. Parenting in the Present Moment will help each family find its own way.

"New from the New York Times bestselling author of The Conscious Parent comes a radically transformative plan that shows parents how to raise children to be their best, truest selves, "--Amazon.com.

While advice abounds from a variety of sources before parents embark on their parenting journeys, the only parent preparation we actually receive comes from our family and peer stories. Yet most adults do not realize that in day-to-day challenges of guiding our children, something interesting happens. As we steer our children through life, we reopen our own childhood roads. Just when our child most needs us, we become needy ourselves: as adults and parents, we find that we have unresolved raising issues, basic needs that were not met in our childhoods. Our needs and memories echo and influence many of the parenting decisions we make, even though we’re unaware of those influences at times. Fortunately, children help parents reach their needs as much as their parents help them fulfill their own. Our child ends up guiding us, by connecting us to some earlier time in our life when we encountered distress. We dredge up a lesson, and we adapt by adhering to or changing the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. We re-negotiate the five basic needs that surface from our childhood memories as our youngsters pass through each of the developmental phases. The self-aware parent focuses on creative problem solving by focusing on one interaction at a time. It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent offers an exploration of how our own childhood memories and needs influence and shape our parenting decisions in our adult lives. Offering tips, stories from a variety of families, and step by step exercises, Janis Johnston helps parents better understand and grasp the tools necessary to face parenting challenges head on, and to explore new ways of understanding ourselves, our children, and our family interactions. Expectant parents and current parents interested in understanding their own personality development as well as the many moods of childhood and their own children, will find clear guidelines for understanding their roles in their children’s lives as well as concrete suggestions for how to navigate the choppy waters of raising children.

In a candid and uplifting manner, therapist-coach and podcast host Cathy Adams shares everyday epiphanies from her own parenting and professional experiences to reveal that while becoming a self-aware parent isn't always easy, it is powerful and liberating. All too often we fall into the trap of parenting without a real awareness of what we're doing and why we're doing it, invariably using other peoples' ideas and values or outdated child-rearing techniques. By developing self-understanding, then parenting from this authentic state, we become joyful individuals who live in a way that's true to ourselves. LIVING WHAT YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TO LEARN focuses on how we can rediscover self-worth and parent in a more connected way. Because children learn by watching how we live, not by listening to what we say.

Parenting without anxiety, guilt, or feeling overwhelmed Happy Parents Happy Kids is the ultimate no-guilt guide to boosting your enjoyment of parenting while at the same time maximizing the health and happiness of your entire family. You can find ways to take care of yourself while you’re busy raising a family—just as you can choose to use parenting strategies that work for you and your kids. This practical and encouraging book will help you · Discover what less-stressed-out parents know about minimizing the fallout from work-life imbalance (to say nothing of all the other things our generation of parents can’t help but feel anxious about) · Tackle the challenges of distracted parenting(in a way that helps kids to develop healthy relationships with technology) · Balance your hopes and dreams for your children with the demands of the rest of your life · Manage screen time for your whole family with simple and effective strategies · Learn mindfulness strategies that can make parenting easier and can be effortlessly worked into your daily life · Live healthier (including a crash course on the science of habit change) · Become a calmer and more confident parent so that you can stop feeling bad and raise astonishingly great kids The takeaway message is clear, powerful, and potentially life-changing. You can lose the guilt, embrace the joy, and thrive alongside your kids.